The present disclosure herein relates to optical distribution network management, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method for recognizing optical connector connection for automatically recognizing an optical connection point.
As point-to-point optical network technology, passive optical network (PON) technology is under standardization by the IEEE and ITU-T, and until now, Ethernet PON (EPON) and Giga-capable PON (GPON) technologies, which provide a transmission speed of 1 Gbps or 2.5 Gbps per PON link, have been mainly used.
In addition, commercialization of 10G EPON and XG-PON (i.e. 10 Gigabit-capable PON) technologies, which provide 10 Gbps transmission speed per link, is near at hand, and time and wavelength division multiplexing PON (TWDM-PON) technology targeting 40 Gbps transmission speed is under standardization by ITU-T SC15.
Due to recently rapidly increasing mobile data traffic, a request for PON capable of effectively accommodating the mobile data traffic becomes higher
The PON technology, which is representative technology of FTTH/B for providing a rapid transmission speed to subscribers by using optical fibers, enables relatively expensive optical communication technology to be constructed and operated at a low cost and is rapidly replacing existing copper line based technologies such as xDSL and HFC, etc. However, compared to optical fibers and nodes, which are increasing every year, optical network infra management is being manually performed (e.g. paper label-based recognition for optical distribution ports). Such a manual connection and recognition method for optical connection points lowers accuracy of network topology information to make it difficult to provide a rapid service.
Connection management between optical connectors and optical adaptors in an optical distribution network (ODN) is performed by a field engineer in a manual manner that identification is performed through paper labels. Accordingly, even in a view of service provider who runs a network, reality is that it is difficult to know how the ODN is coupled unless the engineer directly checks with his/her own eyes in the field. Due to new network service subscribers or existing subscribers' quitting, environment settings of optical connectors in an optical distribution frame are periodically changed. Then it is difficult to distinguish the optical connectors from the optical adaptors in the optical distribution frame to cause frequent binding errors and service delivery delays.
In order to address such limitations, NTT in Japan proceeds research and development to make it easy to recognize an optical fiber infra by using barcodes or quick response (QR) codes on optical connectors, splitters, and optical distribution frames, which configure an optical distribution network. On the other hand, Huawei in China develops an intelligent ODN with an ODN management platform and makes an effort in marketing and standardization.
In order to manage optical connection points in the ODN, technology for recognizing whether an optical connector is connected is necessary. Although it is known that RFID technology is used for recognizing optical connector connection, it is not free to manufacture a tag shape and in particular, a reader in which wireless communication technology is realized becomes complex. In such optical connector connection recognition technology, a low realization cost and low power driving are strongly required.